3D PRINTING

I'll give it a try with PLA, it should be strong enough as long as he doesn't have more metal dropping on it. I also have ASA but I would worry about warp on a part that big and flat.
PLA is pretty strong, but in my experience it doesn't take much use outdoors before it starts to discolor and break down from UV exposure. PLA+ is a step better if you have it (I generally use PLA+ for everything)
I guess the question is how much @mommucked uses his saw outside ;-)

Yeah ASA is great for its higher UV stability but WOW is it hygroscopic and warpage is just as bad as ABS. We have a ton at work that is considered trash just due to age. It bubbles and pops really bad.
 
PLA is pretty strong, but in my experience it doesn't take much use outdoors before it starts to discolor and break down from UV exposure. PLA+ is a step better if you have it (I generally use PLA+ for everything)
I guess the question is how much @mommucked uses his saw outside ;-)


Yeah ASA is great for its higher UV stability but WOW is it hygroscopic and warpage is just as bad as ABS. We have a ton at work that is considered trash just due to age. It bubbles and pops really bad.
The handle was tight and strong before It was broken off. The spring that holds saw up after the cut is pretty stiff but the handle was solid/strong.The top piece is fine.
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the bottom piece is in pieces, many pieces...
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Not sure how I missed this thread, I got a 3d printer a couple months ago, not as good of a deal as @RatLabGuy got on his CR10 but was still considerably cheaper than new. I bought a CR10v2 with bltouch and ~15 rolls of filament for $400 (or was it $350??). I have since added a fabric enclosure that is way larger than the printer, I wasn't expecting the size of the enclosure, but oh well. It keeps little fingers off the printer and plenty of space inside the enclosed to leave tools and such sitting.

My 9 year old is showing the 7 year old how to use tinkercad right now. What finally got my boys to WANT to use tinkercad was after I put Corbin's name on a panel for his RC truck. We are printing his first design now, a little robot. Will post a pic in a couple hours.
 
Not sure how I missed this thread, I got a 3d printer a couple months ago, not as good of a deal as @RatLabGuy got on his CR10 but was still considerably cheaper than new. I bought a CR10v2 with bltouch and ~15 rolls of filament for $400 (or was it $350??). I have since added a fabric enclosure that is way larger than the printer, I wasn't expecting the size of the enclosure, but oh well. It keeps little fingers off the printer and plenty of space inside the enclosed to leave tools and such sitting.

My 9 year old is showing the 7 year old how to use tinkercad right now. What finally got my boys to WANT to use tinkercad was after I put Corbin's name on a panel for his RC truck. We are printing his first design now, a little robot. Will post a pic in a couple hours.
Thus far I've been pretty happy with it, for a large format budget printer its a deal. Haven't added the BL Touch yet but intend to.

Do you use Cura? There's some weirdness with pre-made profiles for it I haven't been able to figure out. Basically there seem to be none that import correctly...?
 
Thus far I've been pretty happy with it, for a large format budget printer its a deal. Haven't added the BL Touch yet but intend to.

Do you use Cura? There's some weirdness with pre-made profiles for it I haven't been able to figure out. Basically there seem to be none that import correctly...?
Yes I use Cura. Everything I have printed turns out fine for the most part (as in to scale). Of course have normal issues I have had to figure out like z offset, temps, etc. Have printed mostly parts for rc crawlers.
 
The handle was tight and strong before It was broken off. The spring that holds saw up after the cut is pretty stiff but the handle was solid/strong.The top piece is fine.
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the bottom piece is in pieces, many pieces...
View attachment 375231
@mommucked I've got the lower handle printed. Had to do it in two prints then glue them together, but it should be strong enough for what you need. I'll pm you on getting the part to you.
 

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Haven't updated in a while, but been printing away. FWIW, I use mattercontrol and like it a lit better than cura.

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The 9 y/o drew this by himself (2nd thing hame has drawn). The first 'bot' he drew printed horrible but he was still happy with it as a nerf target, but I think the bed had gotten out of level (I guess the knobs on the bottom of the bed need locknuts or something?)

I did separate the legs from the body on this one to avoid having as much supports, just hot glued them on.

IMG_20220625_230840632.jpg
 
R/c crawlers chassis' rotate to new versions on a regular basis, or adding things like the custom panels and name on the hood on this one. I have had decent luck selling excess parts for these trucks on eBay or at the local hobby shop. I am printing a modified version of this chassis right now for my crawler.

IMG_20220625_234954333_HDR.jpg
 
but I think the bed had gotten out of level (I guess the knobs on the bottom of the bed need locknuts or something?)
Best thing you can do for most cheap 3d printers is replace the springs. Def helped w/ my CR10. Get some longer or stiffer ones so it really take a lot to move the bed, it will stay in the same place a whole lot more. Aside from it making it harder to shift out of whack, the extra stress on the tightening bolts decreases the chances they will move.
I rarely have to level by Bibo or CR10 anymore.
 
We're hosting a Spanish HS student again, so I made named towel hangars for all the kids.
They are thermochromic PLA, changes color when it gets warm, to orange, pink, and yellow, respectively.
IMG_20220627_203409496.jpg
 
Found the file for the phone case, quad lock, and Darth Vader on thingiverse. Added them all together to make myself a new phone case. It fits the quad lock as intended, and fit the phone, although I wish it wrapped around the front of the phone a touch more.

IMG_20220627_220303912.jpg
 
So.... Question for @RatLabGuy and anyone else that might use 3D printing professionally. We've got three printers at work, and some of my coworkers have units at home for prototyping purposes (I didn't get in on that buy....f*ckers). Our big machine in-house is a 3D Systems SLA printer. Makes some fantastic prints in terms of surface finish and part accuracy. But durability? It's SLA. So it can be brittle.

We've also got a Form 2, which I LOVED (at first) just because of the wide selection of resins. Anything from tough/rigid parts, to flexible "plastics" to rubber-like materials for things like switch boots, grippy things, gaskets, etc. Really versatile machine, although small. Quality has seemed to slide over time, but I also have been working hybrid schedule for the past 2+ years, so one of the machinists there at the office is completing the post-process. Might have something to do with the slip in quality... since he may not be scrubbing out all the excess resin before curing.

Last and most recently, we've acquired an Ultimaker S5 Pro. Also a versatile machine, it's got dual extruders to run multiple filaments at once. Works well for support material, etc. where needed. I'm not the biggest fan, since it's a "silly string squirter" as I refer to it, and doesn't have the highest print quality or accuracy....at least compared to the first two. Perhaps it's user error? Not sure. I've never set up the prints on that one, so I don't know how much adjustment one can put into the builds.

My question comes in the need for metal parts printed. I'm currently working on a project that I need some durable prototypes made. I contacted our usual go-to for sourced prototyping, a local place that has a lot of capability and typically turns out some fine work. They have a machine to run DMLS, and made me some 18-8 stainless parts.....they are nice, but they're not all that fantastic. Especially for the price tag.... Size is within a reasonable tolerance, but the surface finish really lacks what is needed. These parts need to be able to slide/rotate in mating machined components, and they really just feel like sliding sheets of sandpaper together. I've been going at it with Swiss files and sandpaper, but this time could be better spent in other areas....lol.

So with all that being said - do you have experience with any vendors with capability to print high quality metal parts? Reason I'm not having these machined is their small overall size, and they would be nearly impossible to machine (at least in our in-house machine shop). The parts are designed for MIM. Two other projects have required metal printed parts, both of which came from the same vendor referenced above. For their respective applications, the quality was acceptable. But for this application...I need better. Got any suggestions?
 
From me, the short answer is, no. We don't have a justifiable need for metallic parts printing here, so we don't do it. If you have access to a kiln, there's some really cool shit you can do with AL with a standard FDM printer using filament from The Virtual Foundry
We have printed ceramics and have some AL but not tried it yet.
Basically it is little pieces embedded in a PLA-esque binder, you FDM print, then bake at 2k or WTFever degrees, the binder bakes off, it melts together, voila, part.
Really neat, its a nontrivial issue to get the end sizing right though.

As an aside we have a UM S5 also, with the materials station. It's nice bc its sort of idiot proof, since ultimaker makes both the machine and the slicer, if you use their materials, the settings just "work" without tweaking. But also I'm a tinkerer, so the fact that it has most functions pre-baked into the firmware and you can't just manually extrude etc is frustrating.

Using its 0.25mm nozzle yeilds some pretty nice detail. It will never be like SLA detail though. But we don't need it, most things we print were designed for gross features.
 
So.... Question for @RatLabGuy and anyone else that might use 3D printing professionally. We've got three printers at work, and some of my coworkers have units at home for prototyping purposes (I didn't get in on that buy....f*ckers). Our big machine in-house is a 3D Systems SLA printer. Makes some fantastic prints in terms of surface finish and part accuracy. But durability? It's SLA. So it can be brittle.

We've also got a Form 2, which I LOVED (at first) just because of the wide selection of resins. Anything from tough/rigid parts, to flexible "plastics" to rubber-like materials for things like switch boots, grippy things, gaskets, etc. Really versatile machine, although small. Quality has seemed to slide over time, but I also have been working hybrid schedule for the past 2+ years, so one of the machinists there at the office is completing the post-process. Might have something to do with the slip in quality... since he may not be scrubbing out all the excess resin before curing.

Last and most recently, we've acquired an Ultimaker S5 Pro. Also a versatile machine, it's got dual extruders to run multiple filaments at once. Works well for support material, etc. where needed. I'm not the biggest fan, since it's a "silly string squirter" as I refer to it, and doesn't have the highest print quality or accuracy....at least compared to the first two. Perhaps it's user error? Not sure. I've never set up the prints on that one, so I don't know how much adjustment one can put into the builds.

My question comes in the need for metal parts printed. I'm currently working on a project that I need some durable prototypes made. I contacted our usual go-to for sourced prototyping, a local place that has a lot of capability and typically turns out some fine work. They have a machine to run DMLS, and made me some 18-8 stainless parts.....they are nice, but they're not all that fantastic. Especially for the price tag.... Size is within a reasonable tolerance, but the surface finish really lacks what is needed. These parts need to be able to slide/rotate in mating machined components, and they really just feel like sliding sheets of sandpaper together. I've been going at it with Swiss files and sandpaper, but this time could be better spent in other areas....lol.

So with all that being said - do you have experience with any vendors with capability to print high quality metal parts? Reason I'm not having these machined is their small overall size, and they would be nearly impossible to machine (at least in our in-house machine shop). The parts are designed for MIM. Two other projects have required metal printed parts, both of which came from the same vendor referenced above. For their respective applications, the quality was acceptable. But for this application...I need better. Got any suggestions?
I renovated a building for Brad Keselowski in Statesville, a few years ago, he has gotten into the Aerospace parts manufacturing. I saw some very intricate parts printed from Titanium. I imagine they could produce what you want but at what price I don't' know. Here is a link to the website.

Also Collins Aerospace, I just finished up with their expansion in Monroe NC. They are doing the same but I'm not sure if they would take on something like what you are asking about. Pretty sure they are only serving aeronautical industries.
 
You need to just buy one of these
 
I'm not very familiar with metal 3d printing, but the ones I have heard about require a post processing with a CNC to get a machined like finish. Some really good ones maybe capable of a finish similar to a steel forging.
 
Just getcha one of these:
 
Just getcha one of these:
I am going to be honest, I looked at that machine on Okuma's website a few weeks ago and I'm still not totally sure what all it's capable of.
 
I am going to be honest, I looked at that machine on Okuma's website a few weeks ago and I'm still not totally sure what all it's capable of.
I've seen it in person, and it can do a lot, but not sure it justifies the 7 figure price tag. Basically laser welding additive mfg combined with a CNC in one package. Seems like an extremely narrow use case. But it's cool, and I look forward to buying a broke one in 40 years and spending $17 million dollars to fix it (i assume that will be the equivalent of about $5k in todays dollars).
 
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